In my class, we are learning to read passages that give a brief biography about important historical figures (both American and Arab figures). After reading these, we were asked to write something about another historical figure. Here, I have chosen to write about the former U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt.

In this passage, the word كان (kana) or “to be” is used a few times, such as to say “he was the 26th president” or other things in the passive voice.

Keywords to help understand include:

ولد (wulida) - born, was born

الجغرافيا - geography

العلم (al a’lam) - science

الفلسفة - philosophy

قانون (qanun) - law

انتخب (antakhab) - elect

اغتيل (a’ateel) - be assassinated

توفي (tuwufi) - to pass away, die

عن كثب - القطب الشمالي+ ثاني أكسيد الكربون

عن كثب is a program on Al Jazeera about science and technology. The first 10 minutes of the program, which was shown in October 2007, is about climate change and the Arctic. The second part is about bacteria, but I’m focusing on the first part here.

Keywords to know for understanding the first segment include:

Many sentences in Arabic, written in the present tense, do not require the verb “to be” (e.g. “is”, “are”, “am”). Nominal sentences in the present tense do not use the “to be” verb, such as ٌٌُُالسماءُ أزرقٌ (al-samaa’u azraqun) - “The sky is blue”.

For the past and future tense, Arabic has the verb كانَ (kana) (”to be”).

• كنتُ طالب - I was a student. (comparable to أنا طالب - I am a student)
• كُنّا نسكن في مصر - We used to live in Egypt.

In the future tense:

• سَأكونُ في لندن يوم الاثنين - I will be in London on Monday.

There are a few situations where present tense sentences need to use كانَ.

Conjugation

As with other verbs in Arabic, كانَ is conjugated.

This video is of an Al Jazeera program, nearly an hour-long, where they interview Syrian Prosecutor-General Ghada Murad. She was the first woman to enter the judiciary in Syria and is now in the position, equivalent of “Attorney General” in Syria. She is involved in “investigating” the killing of former Lebanese premier Rafik Harari and is expected to cooperate with the United Nations on their investigation.

I was able to pick out numerous words in the program that I understand and get the gist of it. Some key words here include:

محام (muhaamin) - lawyer

ولدت (waladat) - she was born

نساء (nisaa’) - woman (singular)

رجل (rajul) - man (singular); رجال (rijal) - men (plural)

مدرسة (madrassa) - school

جامعة (jami’ya) - university

كلية (kulia) - college

الجقوق (al haquq) - law

This video has a lot of good content to work with, so I will likely come back to it again later. It helps just to listen to it and see what you can understand and figure out from the context.

As in English, questions in Arabic are indicated with use of rising intonation.  Here are some question words in Arabic:

مَل (hal) - do (as in “do you?” or “is it?”), used for yes/no questions

ما؟ (maa) - what?

ماذاذ؟ (matha) - what? (used with verbs, such as “what are you doing?”)

مِن؟ (min) - who?

أينَ؟ (ayna) - where?

كَيفَ؟ (kayfa) - how?

متى (meta) - when?

لماذا؟ (limatha) - why?

كم؟ (kam) - How many?

Examples

مِن هُوَ؟ - Who is he?

مِن أينَ أنتَ؟ - Where are you from?

كَيفَ حالك؟ - How are you?

كَيفَ الحال؟ - How are things?

ما هذا؟ - What is that?

مل يوحد؟ - Is there …? or “are there …?”

The Arabic word for question is سؤال (su’al) and the plural form of the word is أسئلة (asa’la).

The television program (برنامج - “barnamaj”) “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” is aired in the Middle East, in Arabic, on MBC (Center for Middle East Television) as من سيربح المليون؟. The show was once very popular in the United States. The prize on the MBC show is 2,000,000 Saudi Riyals, which is approximatley $520,000 USD.

In this segment, the contestant is answering السؤال الثامن (the eighth question), which is asking who played “Anna Karenina” on film? “Anna Karenina” is the title character of a book by Tolstoy, which was made into a film in 1935.

More about the novel and the film:
* Anna Karenina - Wikipedia (English)
* أنا كارنينا - Wikipedia (Arabic)

The verb “translate” is ترجم (tarjama) in Arabic.

From this verb, a number of different nouns can be derived including “translator”. The word for “translator” (male, singular) is مترجم (mutarjim) and for “translator (female, singular) is مترجمة (mutarjima). The plural, masculine form of the word is مترجمون (mutarjimun) or in some grammatical situations, it is مترجمين (mutarjimin). The feminine, plural form (”translators”) is مترجمات (mutarjimat).

Another noun derived from the verb is “translation”. The singular form of the word is ترجمة (tarjima) and the plural is ترجمات (tarjimat).

The BBC Xtra English program for March 26, 2007 was about translators or more specifically about subtitlers (people who write subtitles for films). They talk about how skill and quality is important for the job, and how lack of quality has led to some “bad translations”. They use the word ركيكة (rakika) to describe these as “weak, meager, poor quality, feeble” - ترجمة ركيكة (tarjima rakika).

The entire clip can be heard on the BBC Xtra English website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/elt/newsid_6495000/6495143.stm

The word “ask” is سأل (sa’ala).

Conjugated in the perfect (”past”) tense:

سَألت عن الاطفال - She asked about the children.

The BBC Xtra English segment from December 5, 2005 is about various terms in English for streets, including the term “lane” which is deemed “classier” and can help a property sell for more.

Again, while this segment of the BBC Xtra program is intended for Arabic speakers who are learning English, it is also very helpful for learning Arabic since they explain things in both English and Arabic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/elt/newsid_4493000/4493070.stm

Here are some Arabic words used in the BBC Xtra audio clip:

الحب المستحيل (al-hub al-mustahil) is the title song by Kazem Al-Saher, on his album released in 2000. حب (hub) means love or affection and مستحيل (mustahil) means impossible.